Thursday 28 April 2022
Jennifer Egan - Own your Unconscious in The Candy Box
The Candy House is a kind of sequel and still bounces around around myriad people, with a timeline from recent past to near future. A clever new box (iPhone on steroids?) allows a points of view review of any past moment and to get other viewpoints of it. 21-year olds are encouraged (as self protection?) to upload their minds to the big grey data world and can then cruise through others' anonymised experiences.
Then there's entertaining ideas about brain implantable memory weevils and eluders running defence against mind probes wanting to slurp up data, but I couldn't help but wonder whether Egan has set fire to a firework factory.
I saw her talk a while ago at a Guardian event, and she clearly has ideas and intent for her novels but in between this one and Goon Squad she wrote a novel set in a rich historical context about a female diver (Manhattan Beach). I enjoyed it and suspect Egan is probably more captivated now with the historical research balanced with modern day perspectives rather than the un-rock-n-roll counterpoint of nerds running around with gray grab data cubes. Even if she did date Steve Jobs.
I could see that Egan was playful with the writing style and with time (again) and we get many styles including an epistolary section. The novel backward-references the occasional Goon Squad character too, but you'd have to re-read the other novel to be able to follow the links.
I'd looked forward to reading this one, but I admit to being a tad disappointed after the blaze of Goon Squad or the rich context of Manhattan Beach.
I wonder if there was pressure to write this as a follow up to the much-loved Goon Squad but I can't help thinking I preferred her sharp change of style in Manhattan Beach.
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